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Letters on Cézanne
Rainer Maria Rilke
Top 10 Best Quotes
“At no other time (than autumn) does the earth let itself be inhaled in one smell, the ripe earth; in a smell that is in no way inferior to the smell of the sea, bitter where it borders on taste, and more honeysweet where you feel it touching the first sounds. Containing depth within itself, darkness, something of the grave almost.”
“Surely all art is the result of one's having been in danger, of having gone through an experience all the way to the end, where no one can go any further.”
“Just as the creative artist is not allowed to choose, neither is he permitted to turn his back on anything: a single refusal, and he is cast out of the state of grace and becomes sinful all the way through.”
“Ideally a painter (and, generally, an artist) should not become conscious of his insights: without taking the detour through his conscious reflection, his progressive steps, mysterious even to himself, should enter so swiftly into the work that he is unable to recognize them in the moment of transition.”
“which so incorruptibly reduced a reality to its color content that it resumed a new existence in a beyond of color, without any previous memories.”
“Early this morning I read about your autumn, and all the colors you brought into your letter were changed back in my feelings and filled my mind to the brim with strength and radiance. Yesterday, while I was admiring the dissolving brightness of autumn here, you were walking through that other autumn back home, which is painted on red wood, as this one’s painted on silk.”
“It should either have passed away with my childhood, or my childhood should have flowed away from it later, leaving it behind, real among all the rest of reality, something to see and objectively tell, like a thing in Cezanne, incomprehensible for all I care, but tangible.”
“Basically, if it is good, one can't live to see it recognized: otherwise it's just half good and not reckless enough...”
“Without looking at a particular one, standing in the middle between two rooms, one feels their presence drawing together into a colossal reality. As if these colors could heal one of indecision once and for all.”
“There's something else I wanted to say about Cézanne: that no one else before him demonstrated so clearly the extent to which painting is something that takes place among the colors, and how one has to leave them completely alone, so that they can come to terms among themselves. Their mutual intercourse: this is the whole of painting. Whoever meddles, whoever arranges, whoever injects his human deliberation, his wit, his advocacy, his intellectual agility in any way, is already disturbing and clouding their activity. Ideally a painter (and, generally, an artist) should not become conscious of his insights: without taking the detour through his conscious reflection, his progressive steps, mysterious even to himself, should enter so swiftly into the work that he is unable to recognize them in the moment of transition. Alas, the artist who waits in ambush there, watching, detaining them, will find them transformed like the beautiful gold in the fairy tale which cannot remain gold because some small detail was not taken care of.”
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Book Keywords:
silk, fall, reckless, creation, scent, aesthetics, art, loss, autumn-quotes, self-knowledge, aroma, growth, smell, seasons, perception, childhood, autumn, creativity, viewing, red-wood